


We All Have A Hunger

by ABookAndACoffee



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Jane Austen-style pining, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Spoilers for Book 4: A Court of Silver Flames, they just need to be in a room ALONE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29668764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABookAndACoffee/pseuds/ABookAndACoffee
Summary: Lucien stumbles into Elain during the acofas-era (before Solstice) and they share a moment before reality rips them apart.Elain felt herself flush, told herself that she was still by the window in the full light of the sun, that trying to use her magic had exhausted her.But she could hear his heart, she could feel it vibrating in the space around her and bringing warmth and life to his body and he was all that her vision could take in. If she kept her eyes trained on his shoulders then she could avoid his eyes and the way that he would look at her as if asking her a question that she may never be able to answer.
Relationships: Elain Archeron/Lucien Vanserra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	We All Have A Hunger

Elain stood at the window, one in a wall of windows that looked over one of the gardens she now had dominion over.

The sun was full in the sky, the heat radiating from the glass and she knew that Feyre would chide her, delicately of course, that she shouldn’t have worn that dress outside. 

Glancing down, Elain noted the mud caking the hem of her skirts and toed it away. The silks stubbornly, softly, rustled back to a resting position against her satin slippers. 

Elain looked back to the window, squinting at the sun. Despite its glare, she saw every blade of grass as it quavered in the wind, watched leaves fall from trees in their final descent, her eyes flickering to where a bee rested in the pollen of a flower. All of it yards away. Far more distant than she should have been able to see. But the only thing she could stand to look at. 

Pressing her palm to the glass, she took in a deep, steadying breath. She chose a flower bud, a peony, delicate, the pink of its petals just becoming apparent from between the green scales protecting its growth. 

_Inhale._

Elain ignored her breath fogging up the glass as she pressed her will towards the flower, asking it to open. 

_Exhale._

The flower began to open. Elain watched in delight as the pink, billowy petals began to push their way through the tough green scales, to blossom, to become what it was meant to be. What she could help it be.

Then it exploded in a cloud of pink dust and shook the others around it on their stalks. 

Elain closed her eyes, calming the reverberation of the flower’s demise in her mind. Sometimes her mind did this, blew back on her as if scolding her for not knowing how to control it, for not knowing the right combination of words to ask for what she wanted.

“Oh.” The masculine voice came from behind and she should have known, she should have sensed him sooner, but the man who had claimed some fate-given connection to her was frozen mid stride just inside the threshold of the library. 

Elain turned and clasped her hands behind her back as if she’d been caught doing something worse than murdering a flower bud. 

“I’m sorry,” Lucien said, “I didn’t know you were in here.” He went to set a book on a side table, then thought better and pulled it back to him. 

“You can put it there,” Elain said. “Feyre won’t mind. We have people now, to put it back where it belongs.”

“All right.” Lucien took a step further into the room, eyes on Elain. He set the book on the table without glancing down at it. “What… What are you doing?”

Elain shrugged. “Gardening.”

Lucien nodded as if he understood, looking her up and down. No, not looking her up and down, he was looking his mate up and down, and Elain had no idea who that was supposed to be. She watched him notice the mud crusting her skirts, sweat and grass stains, the strands of hair that hung loose from her chignon, the utterly disheveled, unfeminine nature of her appearance. 

His gaze took her apart, one piece at a time. 

Elain heard more than his heart beating from across a room, and across the courts. She often heard his dreams, listened as he screamed for his lover. His nightmares competed with her own of Graysen and the Cauldron, of the sound of her father’s neck snapping, and she hated them equally. 

So now, while he watched her in the flesh, mere steps away, Elain wished she could stop hearing the pounding of his heart as it sped in excitement to see her. She hoped that he couldn’t hear the increase in her own, the involuntary hitch in her breath as she started to speak and then stopped herself. 

When his gaze reached her hips, Lucien’s mechanical eye whirred quietly while his other widened in alarm. Before she could mark that he had moved he had strode across the room, pulling her hand from behind her back. 

Holding her hand palm up, he demanded, “What happened?”

Elain’s hand was grey with the dryness and dirt of the day’s work, but amongst that grit she had a wound from where she had been careless pruning a rosebush. The thorn was still lodged in the fleshy part near her thumb. 

Lucien’s nostrils flared as he scented her for more blood, other wounds. And then he looked up into her face.

Elain felt herself flush, told herself that she was still by the window in the full light of the sun, that trying to use her magic had exhausted her. 

But she could hear his heart, she could feel it vibrating in the space around her and bringing warmth and life to his body and he was all that her vision could take in. If she kept her eyes trained on his shoulders then she could avoid his eyes and the way that he would look at her as if asking her a question that she may never be able to answer. 

And he felt it, too. Elain knew from the way that his breath caught that he, too, was marking this as they nearest they had ever been to one another since he had thrown his coat on her body to shield her from lecherous glances. To spare her that slight indignity, as if it had still mattered after losing her humanity to the Cauldron.

Her body hadn’t felt a sense of overwhelm like this since she’d been with Graysen. Graysen had pressed into her, urgent and hot and demanding, and she had yielded when he called her beautiful, when he had promised that he would always love her, would be honored to be the father of her children. And she had wanted him too, she had wanted all the beautiful things he said they would have.

Elain’s head roared and she blinked, bringing herself to the present moment. 

Yet for all his imposing mass, Lucien held himself just enough apart from her so that she could slip away if she wanted. Her hand was still in his, her palm prone and warming from his breath. He looked at the gash in her skin and sighed in relief. 

Elain reached up and pulled the thorn from her hand, wincing and then tossing it aside. A fresh drop of blood appeared and the wound quickly healed without her willing it. Her hand stayed resting in Lucien’s and she blinked at it as if she were unaware of how it had gotten there. 

Finally, Elain looked up. First at her hand, small and delicate and caked with drying mud, resting in his. His hand, tan and strong, the long fingers holding her own gently. She took in the sleek, muscled forearms where his shirtsleeves had been rolled up, that held her against the window. Then the broad chest she could make out from beneath his white buttoned shirt. And at last she looked at his face. Tan skin that glowed with his otherworldly power and the scar that did nothing to mar his beauty. That scar must have been a reminder every day, to everyone around him, that he had suffered.

Elain had no such scar that anyone could see. Above all, none that her sisters could see.

While Elain watched his eyes, Lucien’s thumb ran over her palm, still gently cradling her hand while she tried to control her features and her heartbeat. She couldn’t give anything away. Because the moment she did, it would be everything.

And he looked at her, looked, piercing the carefully constructed veil that she had just begun to rebuild after Hybern had torn it all down. 

Elain felt herself loosen and her heart sped even as her guard lowered. 

When Lucien began to raise her palm to his lips, she did nothing to stop him. Her heart sang as he pressed his mouth into that delicate skin and it was a song she had never heard before, and one she never wanted to stop listening to. 

Elain gripped the frame of the window behind her with her free hand as every nerve in her body became aware of the way that Lucien’s lips moved and his breath warmed her skin. The thread she had felt between them since coming out of the Cauldron hummed in contentment as he explored the lines and contours of the palm of her hand. She was fairly certain that the entire world had narrowed to that point on her body and that no one would ever be able to touch her in quite the same way again. 

With a sigh, Lucien raised his head and searched Elain’s gaze. His thumb caressed the back of her hand as it pressed against his chest in an already-familiar habit. His grip held her steady, even as she felt the world moving beneath her feet.

“Elain,” Lucien began, his voice a near whisper. 

“Mmhmm.” Opening her mouth would mean letting go completely. If she looked him in the eye again she would throw herself into him, finally listening to the insistent tattoo of her heart - _find him, see him, touch him._

“I have to tell you something.”

Elain straightened, suddenly, painfully aware that there was a world outside the two of them, and that that world would appear to wreck and ruin whatever she tried to claim for herself. 

Lucien had that look in his eye, the one that Elain had become familiar with as a child. He was worried about hurting her, about watching her crumble, and she felt her back stiffen, her muscles schooling themselves into a tight smile. 

“What is it?” 

He hesitated, looking down at the hand he still held in his own. “Your father. He wanted me to-“

Elain pulled away quickly, all the warmth and color stripped from her face. She slid past Lucien and made for the door. 

As she walked away from Lucien she could feel the bond become taut again, the tension going to her core. She felt the sun as it made its way across the horizon to usher in the night. She sensed the incipient chirp of crickets at dusk, as they prepared for night. Where the dark things prowled, and waited for her to sleep. The night-blooming datura would make their appearance, and she would listen to their petals crackle and unfurl. 

And she would lie awake in her room, wondering how it could be that she still existed in a world in which her father no longer lived, and wondering when she would ever be able to hear the words he had left for her spoken through her mate’s voice.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew it's been a while since I've posted anything! We'll see how long this lasts. ☺️


End file.
